SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge Challenge: Complexity and Fragility Ryan Baird, Chris Glazner, Michael Lightfoot, Frances Moore, Shweta Singh, Lydia Smith, Miles Townes, Jason Veneman, Nini Zhang

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge Short-term survival and an exuberant plunge into building our future are generating a new kind of unintended consequence—hidden fragility. This is a direct effect of the sophistication and structural complexity of the socio-technical systems humans create. It is inevitable. And so the challenge is.. How much can we understand and predict about these systems and about the social dynamics that lead to their construction? The Challenge:

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge Example: Air Travel (Passenger Miles Traveled per month, January 1996 to March 2011)

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge Example: US Banking Industry

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge Some basic concepts.... Socio-technical systems combine technological knowledge and social environment. Complex systems consist of multiple components, each component active in different domains and structured in its own right, interconnected in ways that lead to emergent collective behaviors and spontaneous architectural re-organization.

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge More concepts... Failure: a significant, systemic loss of function Fragility: sensitivity to failure. Robustness: resistance to failure. Resilience: capacity to recover from failure.

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge Example, again: Banking Crisis

SFI CSSS 2011 Complexity Challenge -Dave Ackley, 2011